Star Wars Empire At War: Forces Of Corruption
by LucasArts Entertainment
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Video Game Reviews of Star Wars Empire At War: Forces Of Corruption
Customer Review: Need a ten star system on Amazon...
Summary: 4 Stars
To say I enjoyed Star Wars Empires at War is something of an understatement. I enjoyed it a lot. It was the first game outside of a mod that allowed me to pit fleets of Rebels against Imperials in real time with a useful interface. I had a few quibbles with the first game, like lack of units, questionable Rebel ground units and a few others but overall I enjoyed it beyond its weaknesses.
Now that Forces of Corruption is out, I can write about what in it makes it both more fun and less fun than the game it spawned from. Lets start with story.
The story of this game does not fit into the lexicon of either the books or the movies. Had the forces of corruption run by your main hero Zahn really existed, I imagine the Empire would have come down on them like a ton of bricks. But that isn't important. The story does an awesome job of bringing in some of the wonderful aspects that litterary Star Wars has created, from the awesome character Thrawn to the witches of Dathomir. Having read the books this all came from I was overjoyed to get to see and use the new stuff. And in the campaign you will sooner or later run into almost all of it.
As for the actual missions and story elements, they do a reasonably good job. I never felt threatened during the campaign, with missions fun but not too difficult. The Zahn persona is compelling though a little cookie cutter for a mob boss villian. His fellow hero units are also fun. The best part of this expansion is, in fact, the campaign.
New Race:
And here is where thing get ugly. The new Corruption units are... just plain unbalanced. Their fighters are the second best in the game, behind the Tie Defenders in usefulness. But with their buzz bot special, which releases a cloud of droids to tear apart fighters or capital ships, they are a menace to any stationary battle line. The Skiprays, the new guy's bomber unit, is certaintly better than Y-wings or TIE Bombers, being able to defend themselves with turreted guns and pump out torpedoes fast. But even with the unbalanced fighters it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunetly it does not stop there. The new "corvette" for Corruption is equal to a Rebel Corvette yet has the ability to shoot down incoming missiles AND torpedoes, meaning even as your bombers attack it, it will destroy them and protect itself from the torpedoes. This is worst when attacking a Corruption base. To stop unlimited corvettes I usually send in bombers to take out the hangers. But now, I can't get my bombers past the corvette and even the piddly few torps they fire get knocked down. The frigates are not as bad but still arguably overpowerful. In particular the Vengence Frigate, with its mass drivers, while having no shields, can kill fighters easily and shoot right through shields of bigger ships, a danger to Rebel ships in particular. Its special, like the hateful TIE Maulers, gives corruption players the untimate kamikaze unit. If you blow most the parts off a Vengence, it can run at you ships and explode, taking them with it. It is not fun when it happens. As an added insult, the heavy Corruption ship, the Keldorn Battleship has numerous mass drivers that mean you can leave the bombers at home seeings as you can use the mass drivers to destroy hardpoints and, in particular, Empire shield generators. And while the Galactic Empire and Rebels have(had) only one big ship, Corruption gets two "battleships" each able to shoot through shields.
The story on the ground is about the same. All Corruption vehicles and buildings are shielded so even their arty unit, which are supposed to be the weakest, can survive a heavy assault. And the main unit, an assault tank, weilds, you guessed it, mass drivers. So Rebel T2-B's and Empire Hovertanks be warned. Not suprisingly the Corruption infantry is equal to if not better than anyone elses.
Balanced?
Corruption does definetly hold its own on the battlefields. But it comes at a cost. Everything costs more to get and build. This should be a balancing factor but actually it is not. Corruption players who expand their holdings will get more money than they know what to do with, even if some of the upgrades for their units are so 20,000 plus dollars. None of these uprgades are uber important since most units work fine without them.
New Empire and Rebel Units:
For the Empire this add-on is a true boon. Until now, Empire infantry was near worthless. Rebel Infiltrators and arty tore through them brutally. But with 3 different Dark Troopers, one which reaps infantry and one which destroys vehicles, Imperials are deadly on the ground. Added to that the Jaggernaut troop transport is almost a tank in its own rights, being better armed than any other transport(a new unit type anyways). In the air the Imps have the new bomber type thing. Haven't played with it yet but it will mean Rebel air superiority is now in question.
In space the Imps have also grown stronger. The Executor, which replaces Vader as the hero, is a battle changer. While it doesn't move about the map eaisily it does sit on the map in such a way that no part of the map is safe. TIE Defenders make the best fighters/bombers in the game and the TIE Phantoms are stealth so you can attack deep into Rebel Space and take out unprotected space stations up to Lev 2 though it can be costly. The Arc Hammer is hardly meant to be used as a assault vehicle but it does hold its own. And with Thrawn flying his Imp Star and Piett flying his, the Imps have 4 heavy ships that are all heroes(though Vader DOES cost money).
Rebels:
This game was... unkind to Rebels to say the least. The B-Wings are great and all but are also Tech 5, meaning you actually get Mon Cals before you get B-wings. And the MC-30's I was so excited about are a truly awe inspiring unit, being capital class bombers with two heavy torpedo turrets. But again, they are class five and do little to help Rebels weakness in Frigates in early game.
Perhaps as compensation the new Rebel heroes are the best in the game. Luke and Yoda both make mince meat of anything, with Yoda leaping about like his Episode 3 incarnation. Rouge Squadron replaces Red and while their special does not destroy any one target, it does make them deadly for a few seconds. But for some weird reason Garm Bel Iblis is a ground hero. In the Timothy Zahn books Garm is a equal to Thrawn in tactics and flies around in a pair of Dreadnoughts. In the add-on he is in a tank type thing that a)gives the Rebels something tough on the ground for once and b) transports infantry. This is good because in the numerous Galactic Conquests I have played I never was able to build the Gallofree Infantry Transports I was supposed to. Which brings up another point. The Rebel Tech tree in Galactic is messed up somehow. If one goes to Tech 5 at game start, reasonably the Rebs still need to steal the top teir stuff. But if that is done, the B-wings and MC-30's at the tip top are lost and unbuildable. Starting at Tech 3 once got me Mon Cals at T4 but I could not build them. I figure this will be fixed but still... annoying.
There is tons more about this game that is new. If for that alone it is worth 30 bucks. But don't expect a lot of love online for the new race until they are somehow equaled out.
Customer Review: Light? Dark? I'm the guy with the guns...
Summary: 4 Stars
So, what's new with the expansion pack? Quite a bit. Lucasarts already took a solid game with the vanilla Empire at War and made significant upgrades to revisit this game in a entertaining way.
I was pretty excited to see Admiral Thrawn making an appearance as a new hero character. Ever since reading the old trilogy of novels where he made his debut, a lot of Star Wars fans readily accepted this Sun Tzu with his Smurfy skin tone.
One of the main highlights is the ability to play the Super Star Destroyer Executor which is actually your Darth Vader hero character but instead of his squadron of Tie-Fighters he commands it.
The time frame of the expansion is after the destruction of the first Death Star where the second Death Star is available for construction which can not only destroy planets but destroy capital ships with one shot (much like the movie Return of the Jedi).
Improvements also include some graphical tweaking such as more detail on capital ships such as the Imperial Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers. Additionally, the "cut-scene" mode has been majorly improved where you don't get as many whacky camera angles. Looks like they took some license from the folks that did Firefly and Battlestar Galactica because when a Y-wing comes swooping in to attack a Star Destroyer (for example) you will get a sharp zoom-in effect much like those shows.
The new Corruption side is a nice addition to just the Empire vs. Rebel game, but they are much more complex to play, in my opinion. After a few hours though you get the hang of it and it is important to note they play a lot different than either the Empire or Rebellion. Most of their strengths include all the clandestine operations associated with a Galactic criminal organization. Once again as i mentioned in the Empire at War review this game really should have been turn-based like Star Wars: Rebellion since you are doing so much playing as the Corrupt side it can be a little daunting, where you will be pausing a lot and probably keeping the gamespeed on the slowest especially with the new worlds.
Speaking of new worlds, the worlds have been revamped to include more including some of the planets portrayed in Episode III. Other planets have been revamped as well. For example, when fighting a space battle on Bespin you won't be fightin in space but rather have a backdrop of the familiar orangish upper atmosphere like in the Empire Strikes Back.
Also with the corruption side, when you do enact piracy or intimidation tactics on a planet you are shot to a little space or ground battle where your objectives are to capture a ship or person, or something else reminiscent of the single-player campaign (which is also quite good).
The tutorials remain excellent, although can be a little fast paced and you need to pay attention to what is going on.
Overall, it was worth my money to pick up. It added a new element to a game I haven't played in awhile, and sure to keep me busy through the holiday season.
Pros:
- Fun gameplay
- Good tutorial
- Great voice acting
- Improved graphical detail
- Thrawn and Super Star Destroyers, weee!
Cons:
- New corruption side is micromanagment intensive at times
- TIE Scout is still in the game (ugh)